Gaming is a cruel mistress.. This is true, and World of Warcraft is no different. Check here to see how a full time dad/worker/student makes his way through Medivh, leaving corpses in his wake.

Tuesday, July 29, 2008

69, and the shadow labs run that never should've been

Well as you can tell I dinged 69 last night.. Not questing though.. in an instance! Shadow Labs (my least favorite of all instances, more on that later).

A buddy I met leveling in Nagrand had a crew assembled to run shadow labs. I was 68, he was 69, tank was 69, warlock/priest were both 70 (and had a few epics). Sounds bad from the get-go right? Well anyway we manage to get in and we wipe on some early trash mobs. Its like you're reading my mind.. only from the past.. its getting worse.

Ok now we manage to get through to the room with the first boss. He's a joke and we all know it. The problem is the felguards he has that do AOE fear and have more HP than all of us combined. But after a few wipes (yes a few) We got to the first boss. I did all out mojo spank-tastic DPS. Well I thought I was anyway. I assumed I'd be last in dps just because.. well there's a 70 lock there (and I know a little something about locks), and a enhancement shaman (of whom I have great respect cuz everytime one of them hits mcgoo they get the windfury triple crit smack down and kill me). After the first boss I ask if anyone has damagemeters up (sorry val, I know you just posted a groin punch of a post about this very thing, and I laughed when I asked in party chat too just because of it).. I said specifically.. I don't need a figure, I just want to make sure I'm pulling my weight.

Me = 37% of damagelock =36% of damage(I don't remember the shaman because of this figure here)

He immediately started either teasing or belly-aching about how he can't believe he was loosing a dps race with a hunter. I was still wearing my WWdN "don't be a ----" shirt so I totally just kinda kidded around back and forth with him.. What I was thinking was.. SCRUB!!! I'm in crap gear, 2 levels beneath you and I'm beating you in DPS? Please delete your character, and never roll a lock again! Could he have been having a bad night? God I hope so. I want to say it publicly here, I have trouble beating hunters in many DPS scenario's.. I have NEVER lost a dps race to anyone 2 levels beneath me.. EVER. EVER EVER EVER.. (I digress)

Now looking at his spec and stuff I don't really know why he was so gimped. I mean sure he did as good of damage as me.. but why wasn't he blowing me away? Anywho I think all these guys knew each other but me, which is fine. The healer was awesome. The tank was good (all be it, unexperienced in shadow labs). Shaman while not maxing out on DPS certainly played a vital role (tremor totem for anti-fear.. poison cleansing totem for.. guess what..you got it.. Poison. And the biggest help mana stream) Mana stream totem earned every bit of its worth last night as we were a group of ALL mana users, (pally tank). With Mana stream and blessing of wisdom on me I could pretty much churn the dps out. I rarely stole aggro, and on those occasions FD'd to ditch it. There were some points where the pally gave us all salvation blessing (I know Val will have something to say about it), and I literally remembered how Val removed the buff just to show the guy/gal that hunters don't need it. I mentioned in her comment area on her blog that I take this as a challenge.. Can I pull aggro with salvation? I did.. on purpose 2x's.. but a quick FD sent the mob back to the tank.

This really wasn't a "brag fest" for me.. so if anyone wants to gander at my gear and say "zomg wtf you're awesome gear is leet" or "noob... your gear is poop" be my guest. I kinda think I keep reasonable gear for what I want to do, but by no means scalable for a 70 (hunter) any way you slice it. I'll have to get some new duds.. finish shadow labs.. and maybe do a few other instances to get some odds/ends I want.

All this being said.... I'm now 1 level away from having 2 70's (you are forbidden to go back and read about how I planned on having 2 70's by 7/5/08.. FORBIDDEN!)